🥝 Operating Cadence, Social Anxiety, Work Satisfaction, Slack Nightmares, Neurodiversity, SWAG, Pull Requests: TMW #219 by CTO Craft

Greetings!

Firstly, a massively warm welcome to O'Reilly Media, who've joined our list of Platinum Sponsors - we're so happy to have them on board as we continue to grow our educational offerings for CTOs and senior technology leaders (more on that in the very near future...)

We have this week and next week's Bytes already in the calendar (see below) and plans for a session every week until August - keep your eyes peeled for announcements here and in the CTO Craft Community Slack. If you're not a member yet, head over to ctocraft.com/community and leave your details

Remember you can see recordings of all previous Bytes events at crowdcast.io/ctocraft

Until next week!

Andy @ CTO Craft

CTO Craft Bytes

📆 Hiring: Non-Linear Pathways: Thu 10 Jun 2021 at 18:00 BST

This fireside chat with Shalini Agarwal, Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, will explore why companies are looking at different hiring initiatives for engineering staff, especially leaning in on non-linear career pathways and the benefits of modern apprenticeship programmes.

📆 Nearshoring: Problem Solving Not Body Leasing: Fri 18 Jun 2021 at 12:30 BST

Jerzy Dörfler, Solutions Architect at PGS Software, will share his own experiences, discuss common problems with nearshoring and show you that taking a step back and talking to your partner about the real problem, improves the overall experience.

From our Partners

The Ultimate Guide to Outsourcing IT in 2021 - from PGS Software

Outsourcing an IT-solution can be daunting - but it's essential to providing your customers with a great user experience

Reads of the Week

Rethinking Your Operating Cadence

In almost all operating conversations, OKRs come to the forefront to solve for the company level operating cadence. But, OKRs don't solve for the team level operating cadence. In practice, most leaders look to syncs and standing meetings to solve for team level operating.

Social Anxiety and Work

How do we listen to ourselves and know when to address our social anxiety, especially when it comes into play with colleagues? Host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with Stefan Hofmann, a clinical psychologist at Boston University about social anxiety’s deep roots in natural human behavior – and how we can address it now.

About our Partners

A huge, huge thanks to our partners for supporting CTO Craft in 2021 - you’re all amazing!

AWS, O'Reilly, Indiespring, Skiller Whale, iTechArt, LinearB, PGS Software, 101 Ways, Albany Partners, The Scale Factory

🥝 🥝  If you’re interested in reaching thousands of senior technology leaders and decision makers, drop a reply to this email to see our Partnership Opportunities! 🥝 🥝

From our Partners

Developers aren’t rockstars; they’re footballers (and that’s a good thing)

When a player joins a football team, they’re subjected to whatever fitness and nutrition programme the team’s coaches and doctors have designed. This is because each individual’s fitness is critical to the success of the team, and therefore not something the team’s management can leave to chance.

Why it’s difficult to build teams in high growth organisations

By “high growth”, I mean in terms of employee count and roughly doubling or more every year. Even at slower growth rates, some of the phenomena I’ll describe may be relevant. The only option where some teams are stable is Sink or Swim, and even then, the new teams aren’t stable.

A Simple Way to Measure Work Satisfaction and See Trends

I explained in Leadership Tip #8 that measuring happiness was a lost cause because happiness is a function of more than just work. I suggested we measure satisfaction. And I didn't tell you how. (You didn't mind-meld with me, did you?) Here's how I've measured satisfaction with several teams.

Unusual tips to keep Slack from becoming a nightmare

Many people offer advice for getting the best out of Slack: use threads, post things in public channels, and use a naming convention for your channels. This post contains some controversial or unusual recommendations about managing Slack or other chat platforms. Human beings have natural limits.

I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about a developer shortage

When I scroll on Facebook or TikTok or any other social media there seems to be a growing trend in April 2021 for the tech community. Tech companies are supposedly in a hiring frenzy right now but they just can’t find good labor! They claim.

Leadership & Self-management

I Think in Flowcharts

The most valuable part of a long bike ride is the second 30 minutes. The first 30 are spent settling into a groove, finding the right pace, and clearing my head. I know this is done when random interesting ideas start showing up, as I’ve written about before.

Reddin 3D Leadership Model

In this article you will find a practical explanation of Reddin 3D Leadership Model. After reading, you will understand the basic concepts of this powerful method for managing a manager’s leadership in the different situations of change that can occur in a company.

Mind the Gap Model

Which challenges do I likely face if I try to implement big changes in my organization? Organizations constantly change, in ways intended and unintended.

Neurodiversity at Work

Study after study shows that diverse organizations are more innovative and generate higher profit. While diverse teams can be great at coming up with new ideas, neurodivergent employees, literally, think differently.

Reads of the Week

The art of the SWAG

I’ve explored estimates are important in software projects, and shared my technique for producing an accurate estimate. That technique is detailed, systematic, and can produce fairly accurate estimates.

How to Improve Service Delivery? Embrace Flow Metrics!

Have you been wondering how to optimize your service delivery? How to improve your workflow? You can do that with flow metrics. It takes practice, so we’re happy to share some from our experience. In this article, you will find a compiled overview of:

Sequencing Architecture Modernization: Risk Averse vs Risk Tolerant

Modernizing an architecture usually take years. Even a decade or more is nothing out of the ordinary for large organizations who have accumulated legacy and heritage systems over long periods of time.

Are Pull Requests Holding Back Your Team?

The rise of Git, GitHub, and Pull Requests (PR) has resulted in some big changes to the practices and workflows within the software industry. In particular, they’ve revolutionised the world of open source, providing a robust mechanism that allows and encourages strangers to contribute to projects.

That’s it!

If you’d like to be considered for the free CTO Craft Community, fill in your details here, and we’ll be in touch!

https://ctocraft.com/community

Please do remember to share this link if you know of anyone who’d like to receive TMW:

http://www.techmanagerweekly.com

Have an amazing week!

Andy